Here's how you can navigate the evolving remote work landscape as a network security professional.

Network security pros can navigate remote work by starting with a full risk check. They should spot key assets and sensitive info their company deals with. They must realize remote work makes more ways to attack, as workers connect from different places and devices. They need to look at current security measures like VPNs and firewalls to make sure they're strong enough for spread-out workers. They should do regular checks for weak spots and test their defenses to find problems before bad guys can use them. Adding multi-factor login(MFA) and endpoint detection tools(EDR) can boost security. By finding and fixing weak spots , they can better guard their company's data and systems when people work from home.

While working remotely we face a lot of security risks starting from securing the endpoints, network, and information available in the data centre. The initial activity of working remotely starts by assessing the risk associated with the data in present and the data in transit. With the ZTNA and SASE approach, it will help us to understand the risk and secure the users information. ZTNA we can secure the data present in the data centres that can be accessed by the users. SASE helps to secure the end user information and endpoints from the cyber threats. Analysing the risk and impact of exploits needs to be periodically monitored and mitigated to overcome the risk of data exposure and data exploitation.

Secure network access is key. Use a VPN to encrypt data sent between remote devices and your network. MFA adds extra security by checking user identity before letting them in. Teach your remote workers to make strong unique passwords and warn them about the dangers of using public Wi-Fi. Keep access controls up to date to stay secure. Think about using a zero-trust security model. This means no one is trusted by default, inside or outside the network. It always checks users and devices making your network safer overall. To consider zero-trust security is smart in today's world. Instead of trusting everything inside the network, it checks everyone all the time. This helps catch threats that might slip past other security measures.

After 2019, the working style has changed from the traditional office centric approach to the user centric approach. Enabling the security for every individual user has become a significant need to keep everyone safe. To achieve this, most of the organization started using the SASE platform to secure them. It offers a bundled approach that includes VPN, secure web gateway, secure sign-ins etc. Later it evolved into a zero-trust security model which made the organization to enable access only for the known and authorized internet access. With ZTNA, it enables the user to be always connected to the corporate VPN (pre-logon always-on) to secure their web and internal traffic; users login and access are secured with passwordless techniques.

Monitoring and securing the end user system is a key component to detect and prevent the users from the intrusion attacks. With the SASE framework, we can enable the IDS/IPS settings for the end user traffic to secure them. By ingesting the events into a SIEM, we can proactively monitor the user's traffic to secure them. Example: Ingesting the logs in SIEM helped us to perform threat hunting on the abnormal activities made by the users like accessing the system outside the authorized boundaries/using third-party VPN on their Wi-Fi/using unauthorised web access can be monitored to restrict and secure them. Monitoring traffic enables us to keep a close eye on the environment to assess the anomalies and eradicate them.

Protecting end-user systems plays a key role in spotting and stopping intrusion attacks. We can turn on IDS/IPS settings to shield end-user traffic by using the SASE framework. We boost security when we add events to a SIEM and keep an eye on user traffic. This setup helps us hunt threats better. We can find weird stuff like people getting into systems they shouldn't using VPNs we don't know about, or going to websites they're not supposed to. When we watch traffic all the time, we can see things that don't look right and fix them fast. This keeps the network safe monitored and protected.

Emphasizing continuous learning is crucial, but it's also important to focus on creating a strong security culture within remote teams. Additionally, leveraging AI driven security tools can significantly enhance threat detection and response capabilities in decentralised work settings.

A simple phishing email can make the complete security stack fall down. Without having the support and awareness from the end-users it's difficult for any organisation to secure their network. Example: In recent days, multiple organizations encountered phishing tactics of using QR code based credentials phishing email that targets a group of users across the enterprise. Multiple providers had faced difficulties in catching these emails before delivery. If the users are not trained about these kinds of threats, it will make them a prey and cause impact to the enterprise. Security awareness training needs to be made as a regular practice by having trending tactics that help the user to detect and protect them. Prevention eventually fails

Creating a strong security mindset in remote teams matters a lot. Teams should learn all the time to stay up-to-date on good practices and new threats. This mindset keeps everyone alert and knowledgeable. Using AI security tools can boost how we spot and handle threats in spread-out work setups. These tools find and deal with possible dangers. They add more protection and make remote work safer overall. When you mix learning with cool tech, you end up with a secure and tough remote team.

Having a regulatory audit on the configurations and the system will help us to secure the devices which we use. It can be achieved in two ways: 1. Vulnerability assessment will help us to secure us from the known exploits and keeps us to the latest/n-1 version of the code. This will help us to secure the devices to avoid cyber attacks on them by using the exploits. Many vendors provide dynamic updates which will help us a temporary workaround. Enabling auto-update will help them to be applied automatically. 2. Assessing the configurations will help us to secure the traffic traversing through the device. It will help us with the visibility of the traffic which we're allowing for the organization. Let's update every device to secure it.

Having an incident response plan and runbook is essential for the cybersecurity team to be ready for any kindof threats. The incident response plan needs to include the following phases: detection, containment, eradication and recovery. Each phase needs to be clearly articulated to use. Detection: Collect all the artifacts to identify patient 0. Containment: Take immediate action to stop the lateral movement. Eradicate: Remove the patient 0 and make the environment ready for recovery. Recovery: Ready to put the system back to production after performing all the malware checks and completing the investigation. All these plans need to be updated at regular intervals to match the latest attack tactics. This will always help to be ready.

When considering the remote work setup, we need to consider all the possible ways to secure the user and environment. Example: While I was performing the assessment for the ZTNA, we took multiple combinations of use cases including the end user experience, securing the traffic towards the Data Centre and towards the internet. It includes DNS security, RTR as well. Combining multiple security services platforms will help to build a robust security solution to secure the user and data. Considering security at the design phase needs to be made as a practice to have a secure configuration and system that supports the requirements. There shouldn't be a situation that compromises the security standard for any new technologies adoption.